


one way ticket

by winterfold



Category: Pod Save America (RPF)
Genre: M/M, Pining, the snowstorm is a metaphor, transitional era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-19 01:47:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11303205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfold/pseuds/winterfold
Summary: A couple weeks into 2012, Lovett comes back to visit.





	one way ticket

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot stress enough how not real any of this is.

Lovett calls in January.

“Hey,” he says when Tommy answers the phone. “Guess what, my show got picked up!”

“The one about the White House?” Tommy says. It’s late. He’s just getting off work, but with the time difference it’s probably only early evening in California. “Hey, that’s great.”

“Yeah,” Lovett says, sounding pleased and — happy in a way Tommy forgot he could be, before he told Favs and Tommy and everyone he was quitting his job. “Gonna take NBC by a storm, watch for it. Listen, I’m gonna be in New York next week to take care of a couple of things, and I was thinking I might catch a bus down after. See you guys.”

“Next week,” Tommy says. “Um. I guess? Favs is gonna be out of town, but you could catch up with like, Cody and Dan and Alyssa or whatever. They’ll be happy to see you.” It’s colder than he thought outside. He pauses with his phone wedged between his head and shoulder to yank on his gloves. One of them is stained near one wrist, and he’s pretty sure was Lovett’s fault.

“Are you implying that _you_ will not be happy to see me,” Lovett says, a curl of laughter in his voice. “Is this like, a subtle hint, Tommy, like you’re furiously sending out DO NOT VISIT vibes right now—”

“What,” Tommy says, startled, and replays the conversation in his head. “No, I wasn’t—” He hadn’t thought about it; he’d been busy, it’d been a while since he’d done much outside of work. He’d just assumed. “No, of course— Lovett, I wanna see you. I’ll figure something out. Take some stuff home, maybe.” He pauses. “Hey, so you wanna crash with me while you’re here, or are you like—”

“Yeah,” Lovett says. The wind picks up suddenly, loud in Tommy’s ear, but he just manages to catch the last of Lovett’s words: “—stay with you.” 

It’s just a fragment, a quirk of audio and timing. He shouldn’t read too much into it. He tells himself that until he believes it.

———

The day Lovett comes to visit, Tommy’s tied up in the sitroom for hours. _Sorry_ , he texts when he gets a chance, scrolling through twenty variations on _Tommyyyyy_ and _where are you_ from Lovett. _In the middle of some stuff, don’t know when I can get out_.

 _Okay_. The reply comes quick. _It’s fine, I’ll hang around here, tell me when you get free_.

There’s an ache somewhere deep behind Tommy’s eyes when he finally gets out, a knot of tension between his shoulder blades. _Are you still here_ , he texts with a guilty feeling in his mouth. He should’ve let Lovett go do something else; he shouldn’t have made him wait around like this. Tommy loves his job — he thinks he loves his job, but it leaves him feeling like this sometimes, when it turns out there’s no room in his life for anything else.

 _Outside the Northwest gate_ , Lovett says promptly, and Tommy closes his eyes and breathes for a minute. Okay, he thinks. Okay.

 _Be there in five_ , he texts, and goes to find Lovett.

Lovett meets him with a cup of coffee in one hand and a crumpled mess of cardboard in the other. “So I got you coffee,” he says. “I mean, technically I first got you coffee, and then it underwent the process of, uh, time, and it may no longer qualify as coffee at this point.”

Lovett looks good. Tommy’s pretty sure it’s not the right time of year to leave him with a tan, even in California, but something about him seems different, anyway. “You didn’t need to—” he says, trying to figure out what’s changed until he realizes he’s staring a little too hard at Lovett’s features. “I’m late, I left you hanging, don’t—”

“Shut up,” Lovett says, “it’s _fine_ , you know secrets and have like, a very important job, _and_ you’re also letting me stay at your place, seriously, I have zero complaints so far.” A gust of wind, and Lovett shivers. “Okay, I have _some_ complaints, but you’re not the one who controls the weather.”

The sky’s still the same threatening gray as when Tommy got in this morning. “Our place,” he says distantly, taking the cup from Lovett’s hand. The coffee is— well, it only vaguely resembles coffee at this point. “Thanks,” he says anyway, swallowing down a mouthful. Might keep him up, anyway. Long enough to get home, get some food, get — he doesn’t know what Lovett wants. He should probably ask.

Lovett doesn’t say anything for a minute. “What,” Tommy says. “C’mon, we can—”

“Our place,” Lovett says. “I thought you got a new roommate?”

“I.” Tommy had a new roommate. He had a couple, and one of them couldn’t take his crazy hours and the other one said he was “too fucking depressing” to be around, and now he’s looking, again. “I’m in the process,” he says vaguely. “I’ll find somebody.”

“Sure,” Lovett says as they start down the street. “It’s okay, Tommy. Obviously I’m a hard roommate to live up to, but you’re just gonna have to learn to settle for someone a little less perfect.”

Tommy’s pretty sure the problem isn’t with the roommates, but it’s not something that he really wants to think about. And he shouldn’t— not while Lovett’s visiting, anyway. It’s nice, having him around. He should just enjoy it while he can. “How was your trip?” he says instead, and lets Lovett tell him about the imagined inner lives of every passenger on his bus while they head for home.

He hadn’t realized: he’s missed listening to Lovett talk.

———

“Wow,” Lovett says when they get into the apartment. “It looks like half a person lives here.” He frowns at the couch, heads over to the closet to yank out a blanket — some fleecy thing Lovett made Tommy buy, once — and then throws himself down across the cushions. The blanket settles on top of him, a faded red, white and blue.

“What do you want me to do,” Tommy says over his shoulder while he opens the fridge door. There’s half a box of leftovers he’s pretty sure is from last week, random condiments, a couple beers. He shuts it again, tries the pantry. “Hire an interior decorator?”

“You could,” Lovett says, “or like, living here’d be good too.” He comes by to peer around Tommy’s shoulder. “You really need to go shopping.”

“I got caught up in a thing,” Tommy says, and firmly shuts the door. “I’ll do it later, I don’t know. We can order something, what do you want?”

“Ah, yes,” Lovett says, “how I’ve yearned for crappy DC takeout,” but he’s laughing when he fishes out his phone. “You think I still remember all the good places’ numbers?”

———

Two slices of pizza later, Lovett’s deep into a breakdown of various personalities in Hollywood. “You’ve got the people who’ve been listened to all their lives because they’re pretty, and therefore assume they have something meaningful to say, right?”

“Who you can’t stand, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Lovett agrees. “But then there are the people who _know_ their face is all they’ve got, and then they’re defensive about it, which is worse. Like, listen, you chose this profession, you are your product, like — accept it! It’s fine! Shut up when people who are smarter than you start talking!”

“You just want everyone to listen to you talk,” Tommy says, grinning, “I’m not sure this is a fundamental flaw of the industry.”

“Things can be both!” Lovett says, and Tommy starts laughing. The apartment smells like pizza and Lovett’s strewn like, seven different mugs across various surfaces in the living room, and god, Tommy’s missed it, missed all the ways Lovett’s presence takes over every place he’s in.

“I don’t think you’re taking me seriously, Tommy,” Lovett says, gravely, and it takes Tommy a minute to swallow down the happiness in his throat and say, “I don’t know that I _should_ — aren’t you supposed to be a comedy writer?”

———

It doesn’t last — of course it doesn’t last.

He puts Lovett up on the sofa, after Lovett’s stuck his head in his room and come back out with, “Why is there nothing _there_?”

“People usually take their stuff when they move,” Tommy points out. “What did you expect?”

“I don’t know.” Lovett looks disgruntled. “A shrine to my person. Puppies you’ve kidnapped off the street. You know, the usual.”

“You know that says more about you than it does about me,” Tommy says, and gets a third blanket after Lovett complains about the first two. “Lovett, we live in a place heated by the magic of technology, you will not freeze to death with ‘only’ two blankets.”

“In the event of a blackout,” Lovett says, with dignity, “I will be the only one alive in this city.”

The snow doesn’t start until after: after Lovett’s finally declared himself comfortable, and Tommy’s checked his email and figured none of them were so urgent they couldn’t wait until morning; after Tommy’s gone to bed, trying to ignore the feeling that Lovett’s somehow passed onto him a sensation of bone-deep cold; after Tommy’s closed his eyes, and taken a couple of slow, deep breaths, and failed for the millionth time to stop thinking long enough to get some sleep.

Tommy’s always worried about everything, running through scenarios over and over so he could make sure he’d get it right when it mattered. It helped in high school, college, when he was fretting over papers and midterms. When it felt like he wasn’t good enough, he could always _do_ something about it. But being press secretary was different, because you could try your best to get out the message, to contain a damaging story, but you couldn’t ever fully control the whims of the news cycle; and being on the NSC was different, again, because he wasn’t sure sometimes that the problems they discussed were fixable at all, let alone fixable by someone like him.

But he liked the job. He liked the variety and complexity of issues that came into the sitroom, and he liked that there were days when it felt like they’d made a difference. Days when they’d achieved something tangible: helped someone live a little longer, or live a little better. So he lost some sleep at night. It was worth that.

He’s awake for a long time under the covers before he gives up and goes to throw open a window. The air outside is white and swirling — a flurry of snowflakes blows into the room, and Tommy blinks against the sudden cold, feels it crackle somewhere deep in his lungs when he breathes in.

He stays there while his ears slowly start to go numb, the tips of his fingers. For a minute, he’s not thinking about anything; for a minute, he’s just sensation, the wind blowing across his cheek and snowflakes brushing against his eyelids and something melting, slowly, setting up a trickle of water below his ear. Then he blinks, and all his thoughts come back at once, and he jerks back from the window and walks blindly out of his room to — move, get some water, anything. Do something.

He forgets Lovett’s here until he’s downed half a glass of water straight from the tap, and someone says, “Tommy?”

Tommy starts; the glass drops from his hand. “Fuck,” he says as it shatters, sending water spilling across the top of his feet. “Jesus, I— Lovett.”

The overhead light comes on. Tommy squeezes his eyes shut against the glare, then forces them open again to find Lovett staring at him. Lovett's hair is sticking up, and there's a faint red mark across one cheek.

“I woke you up.” Tommy winces. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s like Antarctica in here, I told you it’d be cold,” Lovett says, and frowns at him. “You know you have like, stuff in your hair.”

His window’s still open, Tommy realizes. He should go close it before the whole place gets even colder, before more snow drifts inside, but the distance back to his room seems, suddenly, unfathomably far. 

He blinks, slowly, trying to get his vision clear. “Sorry,” he says again, and mechanically reaches for a piece of glass by his feet. “I can— look, go back to sleep, okay, I’ll deal with this.”

The glass looks like it broke fairly neatly. One side of the shard is the smooth curve of the rim, the other a clean, sharp line. It almost doesn’t hurt when it slips down the side of his index finger; the slice doesn’t even start bleeding for a good five seconds, before tiny beads of red start welling up along the edges.

“Shit,” he says, and it comes out shakier than he means. He is so fucking tired. He brings his free hand up to his face, presses hard down the bridge of his nose, and it doesn’t help at all.

“Tommy.” Lovett comes closer. He takes the shard, a smear of blood along one side, and sets it in the sink. Grabs for Tommy's hand. “Tommy,” he says again. “You're freezing.”

“Sorry.” The apology’s automatic. Lovett hates being cold. Lovett shouldn't be here anyway, a city he never liked much and can't stand now, most days. He remembers, selfishly, wanting Lovett to stay back in September, and now here he is but Tommy's got nothing for him except this siege of snow.

“Don’t—” Lovett’s grip gets tighter; his other hand is at Tommy's jaw. “That is snow,” he says quietly, wiping a droplet of water from the side of Tommy's neck. “Were you _outside_? Tommy, what were you—”

“No!” He doesn't know why that comes out panicked, but Lovett's getting a tight look in his eyes, the way he used to when he got really furious, not performative but deep from the heart. “I wasn't— no, Christ, I, I opened a window.”

“Okay,” Lovett says, exhaling, “okay, we are gonna— no, actually, _you_ are gonna go sit over there, and I’m gonna—” He waves at the glass and the water and the— everything. Like he was responsible for any of it; like he should be.

“I can,” Tommy starts, but Lovett just folds Tommy's fingers around a scrap of paper towel and shoves him toward the couch.

“Don't argue with me,” he says sharply, then sighs, a hand on his face. “Just. Hold that, all right? You're gonna bleed all over the floor.”

———

Tommy doesn't know how much time goes by before Lovett drops into the space beside him. He’s exhausted enough that everything's starting to feel a little hazy. It could almost be a dream when Lovett says, “Let me see that,” and uncurls Tommy's hand so he can tape a square of gauze against his finger. This whole thing, all considered, might even rank on the nicer end of things Tommy’s mind has conjured up late at night.

Except there's Lovett, his face drawn and angry but still holding onto Tommy’s hand, his thumb stroking carefully over Tommy’s knuckles; and there is, despite the fact that Lovett’s long since shut the open window, the scent of the storm clear in his nose.

“I’m—” Tommy tries, and Lovett looks at him with a frown slashed between his eyebrow and says, “Tommy, if you apologize again, I swear to god—”

So he bites down the _sorry_ , and then he’s out of words.

Lovett’s quiet for a minute, then two. Tommy finds himself comparing silence with Lovett and silence without him, trying to articulate a difference he’s not entirely sure exists. And outside — the snowstorm, raging on, has swallowed up all the noise. It must be quiet out there, too.

“Fuck,” Lovett says, finally, and throws his head back. “God. Tommy.”

“I don’t—” Tommy says, and stops. He can’t give him— he doesn’t know what Lovett _wants_.

“You weren’t gonna tell me.” Lovett’s words all come out rough-edged. “Of course you weren’t gonna tell me. But how did I— Tommy, I didn’t fucking see it.”

“You didn’t— it’s not your fault,” Tommy says. He closes his eyes, because it’s easier than looking at Lovett, and easier than turning away. “Look, it’s been a long fucking day at the end of a really long fucking week, which is my job, and I knew it’d be like this when I took it, and you knew when you worked here, and I’m— I’m still here, and you’re not, so.” 

So. So Lovett left, and Tommy found out that he’d let himself grow out of practice at living without Lovett, but that was his fault, wasn’t it.

“So,” Lovett echoes, and Tommy says, tiredly, “So it’s not your problem.”

Lovett starts to laugh, a soft, breathless sound. “Tommy,” he says, “Tommy, hey—” and that’s his hand on Tommy’s cheek, brushing across his eyelids “—c’mon, look at me, look at me, please,” and Tommy’s always, the problem is that he can’t stop looking for Lovett even when he’s not here anymore.

“I didn't,” Lovett says when Tommy opens his eyes, “Tommy, I left the job, I didn't leave _you_ , I never—”

And Lovett's got his hands on either side of Tommy's head and he's looking at him with a hot light in his eyes, and what do you call it when it's not muscle memory, just a thought you've had so many times it's worn grooves into your ribs—

Tommy leans forward and kisses him, and for a second the inside of Tommy's head is perfectly still.

Then everything comes back.

“We can't—” he protests, trying to fall back, but Lovett’s got a stubborn set to his jaw and his hands stay where they are, steady.

“Stop doing that,” he says, “Tommy, stop.”

“What,” Tommy blinks. “What am I doing?”

“God.” Lovett’s crowding Tommy, tipping him back until he’s pressed against the arm of the sofa. “You think so goddamn much.”

It’s so _Lovett_ , fondness wrapped in insult wrapped in something else altogether, and Tommy can imagine— 2010, 2011, when Tommy still knew how to hold himself together, but what if it’s too late, what if there’s nothing here anymore because Tommy’s fraying to pieces?

“Lovett,” he says, voice cracking, “I don’t know if I have anything for you.”

“Yes, you do,” Lovett says, and this time it’s Lovett who leans in to kiss Tommy, slow and deliberate. “You do. Shut up.”

———

“You should fuck me,” Lovett says, a minute or hour or week later, Tommy isn’t entirely sure. Outside, it’s dark; the wind’s died down, but the snow’s still falling thick. It feels like Lovett’s always been sprawled on top of Tommy like this, warm and solid and demanding, all of Tommy’s attention on him.

“Sweet talker,” Tommy mumbles against his mouth, reluctant to move. “You this nice to everybody you find having a breakdown?”

“Yeah, Tommy,” Lovett deadpans, “I go roaming around the halls of our most sacred institutions to pick up the serious-eyed guys determined to drive themselves into the grave before forty. It’s really fulfilling as a hobby.” There’s a lazy minute while Lovett licks at a spot behind Tommy’s jaw, then he stops again. “Unless like, maybe you don’t want to.”

“No, hey.” Tommy reaches up, ends up tracing the curve of Lovett’s mouth. “I do, I want to, I want—” He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, so he slides a hand under Lovett’s shirt instead, presses his palm to the warm skin there. It’s easier when he knows what Lovett wants. Easier to want what Lovett wants.

“Good,” Lovett says, and sits back completely, tugging Tommy up with him. “C’mon, then, Tommy, do it right. This making out on the sofa thing is amateur. Take me to bed.”

———

Lovett must've left the extra blankets in Tommy’s room when he came in to close the window; the sheets are still cool to touch, but here they are, piled in a heap at the center of the bed. “I don’t need all this,” Tommy frowns. “I don't even think these are all mine.”

“No,” Lovett agrees, “some of them are mine,” and pushes Tommy down to the bed with a hand to his chest. “Because you’re a thief who won’t return his roommate’s stuff when he’s moving, apparently, it’s appalling.” He walks around the bed, pulls open the top two drawers on the nightstand. “There we go.”

Tommy looks down at what he’s sitting on. It’s possible he vaguely remembers it: soft and frayed at the edges, a pale yellow color he suspects has had all the brightness washed out of it. He definitely hasn’t seen it since September, probably longer. He hadn’t even known it was here.

“I’m just saying, I’ve been looking for that,” Lovett says conversationally, tossing lube onto the bed before climbing up and settling on top of Tommy’s legs. “My favorite blanket, Tommy Vietor, what do you have to say for yourself?”

“How favorite could it be if you forgot to pack it?” Tommy says, watching Lovett shove his sweatpants down his thighs. The entire conversation feels strange, like it’s two mismatched moments laid over each other. One from before Lovett left, with all its easy, casual words between them; and then this one, Tommy shifting his hips so Lovett can pull down his boxers, Lovett’s fingers on his skin. He focuses on the first, tries not think about the second. If he lets himself, Tommy knows, he’ll never be able to stop.

“Those things have nothing to do with each other,” Lovett shoots back. He’s uncapping the lube, spilling some across his fingers and then rubbing them together thoughtfully. “So you have nothing edible in the fridge but this, you have in abundance?”

Tommy can’t remember the last time he wanted to have sex. It’s been— well, he’d never been the type to hit the bars every weekend, anyway, and then he’d just gotten busier, hadn’t he, and it didn’t seem as important with everything else going on—

“Hey,” Lovett says easily, “those are respectable priorities, it’s fine,” and then his hand is drawing a slick line across the top of Tommy’s thigh. “Does that mean you don’t— I mean, I’ve got condoms, I can—”

There’s a box somewhere, Tommy’s pretty sure, maybe in the bathroom and probably good for another year, at least; but what tumbles out of his mouth instead is, “I’m clean.” 

“Oh,” Lovett says, just _oh_ , tilting his head a fraction to look at Tommy’s face, and Tommy doesn’t know if— does Lovett want it, Tommy should’ve let him get one, he shouldn’t have said. This is the problem with doing this with Lovett, because Tommy wants too much, all the things he shouldn’t want.

“You can—” Tommy starts, cracked, and Lovett puts a hand over Tommy’s mouth and says, “Okay, we can play it that way.”

“Oh,” Tommy says against his palm, his thoughts ground to a halt.

“Yeah, _oh_ ,” Lovett says, mocking and affectionate at once, before he slides his hand down to Tommy’s chest. “Gotta be honest, I thought you’d be the one wanting test results in triplicate.”

Tommy manages a faint grin. “Got too much paperwork in my life,” he says. “Don’t add to it.”

“Well, I spend my days in Hollywood yelling at producers for their lack of vision and not, tragically, getting laid,” Lovett says, and then he’s moving, down the length of Tommy’s body, nudging Tommy’s knees apart with his elbows until he’s settled between his thighs. “You know, you never said you didn’t want me to leave.”

“What?” Lovett’s mouth is nearly at Tommy’s dick; Tommy has to close his eyes again, take a couple of breaths so he doesn’t do anything embarrassing.

“When I said I was thinking about going to LA.” There’s a thumb stroking at the back of Tommy’s knee, sliding up along the inside of his thigh. “You said I should.”

Tommy’s not sure why they’re talking about this now. “You should’ve,” he says, “it’s, it's what you wanted.”

“I _know_ what I wanted.” There’s an urgent tinge to Lovett’s voice, something Tommy can’t understand. “But I never know what you want.”

“I couldn’t—” Lovett’s hand is edging up to the base of Tommy’s dick, and Tommy doesn’t know if he can move, doesn’t know if he can stay still. “You wanted to. I wasn’t going to make you stay.”

“I know that,” Lovett says, “but Tommy— you could’ve _asked_ ,” then he’s swallowing him down, his mouth hot and wet, his eyes dark.

“Lovett,” Tommy gasps, sharp and strangled, and it's a long moment before Lovett pulls his head back, says hoarsely, “Tell me what you want.”

“Let me fuck you,” Tommy says, which is true; thinks, _everything_ , and that’s true, too.

———

Lovett’s drawn the curtains. They're thick and heavy, the kind of blackout ones you can get from Target or something. He'd given them for Tommy a few months after Tommy moved in. Maybe it’d been a belated birthday present. All Tommy really remembers is Lovett shrugging, saying, “There's that light outside your window, right? Maybe this way you won't stay up half the night.”

That hadn’t been the issue, but Tommy’s thinking about that now as Lovett slowly slides two fingers inside himself. It’s like being blindfolded, or being underwater. There’s nowhere to go, nothing else except this, now: the headboard cool and solid against his back; Lovett exhaling with the faintest hint of a whine, and still looking at Tommy all the while.

“Have you done this before?” Lovett says, casual, as he pulls his fingers back out. They’re still shining with lube; Tommy’s mouth goes dry at the sight.

“What.” He slides his gaze up, to where the muscles of Lovett’s stomach have gone tight, the hard line of his dick; up again, to the way Lovett’s staring, frank and curious. “Sex?”

Lovett laughs. “Yeah, Tommy, that’s it, I really wanna know if this is your first time, so like, maybe I should go slow?” He wraps his hand around one of Tommy’s ankles, urges him lower and lower until he’s lying flat, looking up. The ceiling above his bed, that’s a familiar view.

Then Lovett’s climbing up across Tommy’s thighs, back in his line of vision. There’s a quick touch at Tommy’s jaw that makes him blink. “Look at me,” Lovett says, half demand and half plea. “You can do that, keep looking at me.”

Tommy does. He watches Lovett swipe a finger across his collarbone, thumb at his nipple, splay a warm, possessive hand across Tommy’s abdomen. “I had a—” Could you call it a _boyfriend_ when you weren’t ever, where other people could see? He only remembers it in the liminal hours, in the small, tucked away spaces; the unspoken agreement that they couldn’t want anything more. 

But Lovett wants something else. He’s tracing along Tommy’s ribs like he can feel the weight of every secret Tommy’s ever kept. 

“In college,” Tommy says, “there was a— yes. I’ve done it before.”

“Okay,” Lovett says, and there’s a hot light in his eyes when he takes Tommy’s cock in his hand, lines himself up and sinks onto it, slow and sweet. “Let’s see if we can do it better than that.”

———

“Tommy,” Lovett says with a slow roll of his hips, “what are you thinking, hey, come on,” and Tommy’s thinking about Lovett, on him and around him, radiating heat and the focus of every thread of awareness Tommy has. About Lovett, the folded ridge of his blanket under Tommy’s back, the sticky summer heat the day Lovett left for California and left something behind. About Lovett, his face flushed pink, a trickle of sweat running into his eyes and his mouth bitten red, almost leisurely stroking at his cock. 

“I’m,” Tommy says, “I, fuck—”

And Lovett stops moving, a hand on Tommy’s hip. “Not yet,” he says, low. “Not yet, not until you tell me.”

Tommy’s eyes are open, but all he can see is white. “I wanted,” he says, “when you left, I thought— I wanted you to stay.”

“See?” Lovett says, stroking up Tommy’s flank, “it’s okay to ask,” rocks back and lets Tommy slip even deeper into him, and Tommy chokes out something that might be a word, might be just a shapeless bite of sound, and comes.

———

Tommy wakes up slowly, which is a change. He notices Lovett first, pressed against his side in a pool of warmth; the rest comes filtering in bit by bit. It’s morning, a little past eight, though it doesn’t feel like it with the window still covered. He should probably get up. He should check his phone, make sure nothing’s come up to cut short his day off. 

“Stop moving,” Lovett mumbles when Tommy slips out of bed. He’s got his head buried in Tommy’s pillow. “Too early.”

“Maybe in California,” Tommy says, smiling even though Lovett can’t see it. “I’ll be right back.”

He takes a piss. Washes up. Wonders if he looks different, staring into the mirror. Outside, all that’s left of the storm is a thick blanket of snow. Maybe last night might disappear the same way.

He makes coffee, swallows down a cup standing by the machine with his bare feet pressed to the cool tile, and then carries a mug back for Lovett.

“You can’t bribe me like this,” Lovett says when he sees Tommy, but he takes the mug anyway, makes a surprised noise when he takes a sip. “Hey. This has normal amounts of sugar in it.”

“A ridiculous amount,” Tommy says, and throws the curtains open. Outside, the sky’s still overcast, the sun only a faint glow in the clouds, but the watery light makes the whole room feel different anyway.

“ _You’re_ ridiculous.” Lovett takes another sip, then abandons the coffee on the bedside table. “Come on,” he says, uncurling limb by limb in a luxurious stretch, until he’s sprawled over more of the bed than seems physically possible. “Get back here.”

They could spend the day like this, slow and lazy; and tomorrow, Lovett will fly back to LA, and tomorrow, Tommy will walk back into the colorless, windowless sitroom in the West Wing and miss him again, miss some place he’s never even been.

He stretches out next to Lovett, looking up at the ceiling, and says into the air, “Would you have stayed?”

A beat. Maybe it would’ve been better not to ask. He wouldn’t have stayed. He wouldn’t.

Beside him, there’s movement. Lovett sits up briefly, throws something over Tommy’s middle. The blanket, yellow nearly faded to white. He catches hold of it by a corner, keeps it between his thumb and forefinger while Lovett settles himself under the other half.

“Come to LA sometimes,” Lovett says, finally, and it’s not the answer Tommy wanted back then but maybe it could be, now. “’s warmer. No snowstorms as far as I can see.”

Tommy rolls over and sees one of Lovett’s arms stretched up lazily over his head. In the pale light, his hand doesn’t feel like his own when he raises it up to run a thumb along the inside of Lovett’s elbow.

“No snow, huh,” he says, rolling the words over his tongue. “Sounds kind of nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> The first 2k of this started as chatfic for the concept "Lovett fucks Tommy into a good night's sleep," before I foolishly said I'd finish it up as real fic, it wouldn't take that long. Ha. Ha. Ha. Thanks to those who witnessed, encouraged, and abetted in its creation, and in particular Nat & Anna, at whom I yelled many incoherent things while this fic took shape, mostly _why haven't they fucked yet_.
> 
> I document my ongoing podcaster breakdown on tumblr @undeployed.


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